The smack talk ahead of Sunday’s AFC Championship game is getting cranked up as barbs emerged from Broncos camp this week accusing the iconic pretty-boy Patriots quarterback of moaning to referees after he gets hit.

“That would be an accurate statement. I’ve never seen any quarterback look to the referee right after he gets sacked more than Brady,” Smith said with a smile on Monday. “Every time he gets sacked, he looks at the ref like, ‘You see him sack me? Was that supposed to happen? He did it a little hard. Please throw a 15-yard penalty on him. Get him fined.'”

In past years, Broncos-Patriots matchups have been defined by Brady against Peyton Manning — Brady holds an 11-5 record in the head-to-head series — but this is a different Manning and a different Denver defense. Manning is more game manager than gunslinger, and Wade Phillips’ aggressive defense spent much of the season making up for his shortcomings. Now the defense is playing proxy for Manning in giving Brady some bulletin-board material.

Antonio Smith sacks Ben Roethlisberger.Getty Images

Crygate? Perhaps not just yet. Despite Smith’s disgust with Brady’s antics, he said he still holds a lot of respect for the four-time Super Bowl champion.

“He’s not going to rattle just because you hit him hard. I’ve tried over the years,” Smith, a 34-year-old journeyman, told the paper. “That’s what D-linemen think: ‘The harder you hit the quarterback, the better it will make it on the secondary.’

“With Brady, he’s a great competitor. You know it’s coming. He’s going to cry about getting hit, but he’s going to take the hit and keep going.”

Brady has reached the AFC title game in an astronomical 10 of his 15 seasons. One of the five failures came in 2008, when he was knocked out for the season in Week 1 with a torn ACL suffered on an unpenalized low hit by then-Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard, which might make a multi-millionaire a little sensitive.